Vaccine for South African Covid strain 'ready in autumn'
Prof Gilbert says work is under way to tweak the Oxford vaccine for the South African Covid variant.
The South Korean and U.S. militaries are scaling back their annual exercises this month due to the COVID-19 pandemic and to support diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear program, officials said Sunday. Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement that the allies decided to start the nine-day drills on Monday after reviewing factors like the status of the pandemic and diplomatic efforts to achieve denuclearization and peace on the Korean Peninsula. It said the drills are defensive in nature and are mostly tabletop exercises and simulations that won’t involve field training.
Past US presidents have left a legacy of untruths ranging from the bizarre to the horrifying.
Several officers reportedly crossed the border after refusing to carry out the military junta's orders.
Cherie Blair’s legal firm has been awarded a contract to defend an ‘autocratic’ regime that receives advice from her husband’s company. Mrs Blair’s firm, Omnia Strategy, has been hired by Serbia over allegations the Balkan State is harassing an independent television and internet company, in an attempt by the ruling party to “tighten its grip on power”. Tony Blair, through the eponymous Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, has been advising Serbia for the past six years. The contract was originally funded by the United Arab Emirates. Last night the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change insisted neither they nor Mr Blair played “any role” in securing the contracts for Mrs Blair’s law firm, saying she is a “well established lawyer” whose firm “has clients all over the world”. Mrs Blair’s involvement with Serbia was made public in legal documents seen by The Telegraph. It lists the barrister as the first point of contact in the dispute and identifies five other individuals working for her at her law firm Omnia Strategy, which is based in a townhouse in central London. It is unclear what Omnia’s legal costs will be to the Serbian taxpayer but Mrs Blair, a QC and former part-time judge who made her name as a human rights lawyer, is known to charge more than £1,000 per hour for her legal services. It is not the first time Mrs Blair’s firm has undertaken legal work for governments who are separately advised by her husband’s company The Telegraph previously disclosed how Omnia Strategy agreed a deal worth hundreds of thousands of pounds with Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Justice to conduct a review of the country’s “bilateral investment treaties”. The deal in 2014 came three years after Mr Blair began advising the country’s autocratic ruler Nuruklstan Nazarbayev in a deal worth millions of pounds. The Telegraph reported how Mr Blair’s organisation gave Mr Nazarbayev advice on how to manage his image after the deaths of 14 unarmed civilians shot and killed while protesting against his regime. Since 2017, Omnia has also provided legal support to the Gambian government in an oil dispute. Mr Blair’s institute also works with the Gambian government. According to its website, Omnia "is an official adviser on international arbitrations to the Government of Rwanda”. The Tony Blair Institute has been providing official “strategic advice” to the Rwandan government since 2008 and Mr Blair is close to President Paul Kagame, who has been frequently accused of political repression and human rights abuses during his 20-year rule.
U.S. border agents detained nearly 100,000 migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February, according to two people familiar with preliminary figures, the highest monthly total since a major border surge in mid-2019. The figures, which have not been previously reported, show the scope of a growing migrant influx at the southwest border as U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, seeks to roll back some of the restrictive policies of former President Donald Trump, a Republican. February was Biden's first full month in office.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey is shaping up to be one of the biggest television events of the year.
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan handily won a vote of confidence from the National Assembly on Saturday, days after the embarrassing defeat of his ruling party’s key candidate in Senate elections. Khan secured the votes of 178 members of the lower house of Parliament, which is comprised of 340 lawmakers. The 11-party opposition alliance — the Pakistan Democratic Movement —boycotted the assembly’s special session.
An anonymous source who is familiar with an FBI cellphone data report says there was communication between the two.
On Friday night, the asteroid Apophis will pass by Earth. When it returns in 2029, its orbit may put it on a collision path with some satellites.
Eight Democratic senators voted against Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) effort to get a minimum wage hike included in the COVID-19 relief bill, but one senator in particular seems to be taking the most heat for it. Sen. Krysten Sinema (D-Ariz.) voted against an amendment to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour over five years, which Sanders introduced after the Senate Parliamentarian ruled the increase couldn't be included under budget reconciliation. She and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) were two moderate Democrats who were expected to oppose the move, since Sinema has said she thinks the issue of a minimum wage hike should be debated separately. pic.twitter.com/a2VkwKcY8r — Kyrsten Sinema (@SenatorSinema) March 5, 2021 Though Sinema's vote wasn't a surprise, critics were still baffled. The Arizona senator, after all, had been pushing for a higher minimum wage for years, calling it a "no-brainer" back in 2014. As The New Republic notes, citing her election win margins, the proposal to raise the wage "is almost definitely more popular than the senator herself in her home state of Arizona ... Hundreds of thousands more Arizonans voted to raise the minimum wage than to make Kyrsten Sinema a senator." Over on Twitter, "Marie Antoinette" began trending after reporters noted she had brought a "large chocolate cake" into the Senate to share with staffers. An opinion column in the Arizona Republic raged, "Sinema apparently just wants the little people to eat cake." Democratic Sens. Jon Tester (Mt.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.) Maggie Hassan (N.H.), Angus King (I-Maine), Chris Coons (Del.) and Tom Carper (Del.) also all voted against the amendment, but none faced the same level of public ire. One possible explanation? The Washington Post's Greg Sargent points out Sinema has the largest number of constituents affected by the failed wage hike. Here are the numbers of people who make under $15 per hour in states of senators who voted no on the hike, as of 2019: Sinema: 839KManchin: 229KCarper: 106KCoons: 106KHassan: 146KShaheen: 146KKing: 158KTester: 126K From this study I reported on:https://t.co/JTq3SNVnuR — Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) March 5, 2021 More stories from theweek.comWhy the Dr. Seuss 'cancellation' is chillingRon Johnson's lazy obstruction exposes the reality of the filibuster7 spondiferously funny cartoons about the Dr. Seuss controversy
A full report will be published "in coming weeks," the WHO said. The news comes the independence of the investigation continued to be questioned.
An Israeli-Canadian lobbyist hired by Myanmar's junta said on Saturday that the generals are keen to leave politics after their coup and seek to improve relations with the United States and distance themselves from China. Ari Ben-Menashe, a former Israeli military intelligence official who has previously represented Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe and Sudan's military rulers, said Myanmar's generals also want to repatriate Rohingya Muslims who fled to neighboring Bangladesh. The United Nations says more than 50 demonstrators have been killed since the Feb. 1 coup when the military overthrew and detained elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won polls in November by a landslide.
... We can put up all the barriers in the world and imagine that they work, but in the end, it adapts and penetrates them,’’ lamented Bollate Mayor Francesco Vassallo. Bollate was the first city in Lombardy, the northern region that has been the epicenter in each of Italy’s three surges, to be sealed off from neighbors because of virus variants that the World Health Organization says are powering another uptick in infections across Europe.
Giuliani, Trump's longtime personal attorney, is also facing lawsuits linked to his baseless claims of voter fraud during the presidential election.
Tensions were raw ahead of midnight as Republican leader Mitch McConnell rose in the Senate for the purpose of publicly ridiculing Majority Leader Chuck Schumer over the daylong delay as Democrats argued among themselves over the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 rescue package. Senate passage of the sweeping relief bill Saturday puts President Joe Biden’s top priority closer to becoming law, poised to unleash billion for vaccines, $1,400 direct payments and other aid, and shows Schumer, in his first big test as majority leader, can unify the ever-so-slim Democratic majority and deliver the votes.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged on Friday to promote business ties with the United States based on "mutual respect" that benefit both countries. The world's two largest economies have been at odds over trade and economic policy, especially when it comes to U.S. efforts to restrict tech exports to China and tariffs both have put on each others goods. This week, President Joe Biden singled out a "growing rivalry with China" as a key challenge facing the United States, with his top diplomat describing the Asian country as "the biggest geopolitical test" of this century.
YouTubers Josh Pieters and Archie Manners paid four royal commentators to speak about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's upcoming interview with Oprah.
A largely pro-Beijing committee that elects Hong Kong’s leader will also choose a large part of the legislature, a top Chinese official announced Friday as part of a major revamp that will increase central government control over Hong Kong politics. The changes are part of a draft decision submitted on the opening day of the weeklong meeting of the National People's Congress, China's ceremonial legislature, which will all but certainly endorse it. The Election Committee will participate in the nomination of candidates for Hong Kong's legislature and also elect “a relatively large share" of its members, said Wang Chen, vice chairman of the NPC Standing Committee.
"You know, my friends and my family members, they all voted for him, and it's been hard for me to process it," Scarborough said of support for Trump.
March 4 had become a highly anticipated date for followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who believed it was the day Trump would return to power.